As Emmy nominations approach, Vanity Fair’sHWD team is once again diving deep into how some of this season’s greatest scenes and characters came together. You can read more of these close looks here.

THE CHARACTER: JAIME LANNISTER, GAME OF THRONES

After seven seasons of swordplay, political machinations, one bad romance, and a pile of dead kxds, you might think that the Game of Thrones audience had seen everything there was to be seen of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s irresistible antihero Jaime Lannister. But true to the deconstructed nature of the book series on which it’s based, Thrones has forced the Danish actor to go deeper each year, continually stripping each of Jaime’s defining characteristics. His stature in court, his fighting hand, his crop of golden hair, his tense relationship with his father, his even tenser relationship with his kids, his bad reputation, his good reputation: by now, all of that is gone. All that’s left of the villain who opened the series by pushing an innocent kid out of a window is an improbable hero who has nothing left to do but try to build something new. And it’s a testament to his rock-steady performance that throughout this tumult, Coster-Waldau’s depiction of Jaime has remained not only steady, but consistently compelling.

Not only that, but as Thrones strips its large ensemble cast down to the bare essentials and begins to pit more traditional heroes versus more traditional villains, Jaime is one of the very few characters left who represent the murky moral middle ground on which George R.R. Martin’sA Song of Ice and Fire was built. In one of Season 7’s most stunning tableaus, Jaime Lannister faced down Daenerys’s dragon all alone and—never mind what happened after—that vision of a flawed man on a fruitless quest tilting at a monster became an instantly iconic moment in a series brimming with heart-pounding showdowns. As the show’s creators were proud to point out, it was impossible to know who to root for in that moment.

It was one of three unforgettable face-offs Coster-Waldau landed with ease during the fantasy epic’s chaotically paced seventh season, which also saw him holding his own against a commanding Dame Diana Rigg during her character Lady Olenna’s swan song and, in the moment that stripped Jaime Lannister of his very last vestiges of identity, finally turning his back on his toxic twin sister/lover: Lena Headey’s steely Cersei Lannister. It’s a scene that book readers have been waiting for, for a long time—but as he said in a recent interview, Coster-Waldau isn’t so sure Jaime’s newfound liberty will stick.

How He Came to Life

The accelerated pace of the series has not been lost on Coster-Waldau, who has often expressed a preference for the show’s earlier, less action-packed seasons—when character arcs unspooled slowly and, with the books as their guides, the actors were able to plot a steadier course as their characters evolved: “We’re used to having a whole season to get to a point. Now suddenly, a lot of things happen very quickly in just seven episodes,” he said. For Coster-Waldau, this means having to construct a good deal of latter-season Jaime Lannister in the spaces between his on-screen trajectory:

Trying to connect the dots between the scenes was a little complicated
because you invest so much time, so many years in these characters, so
when suddenly you find out that Jaime comes back and his son has
committed suicide . . . there’s so many things that obviously you can’t
go through, on-screen, all of these moments, but you have to still walk
through them in your mind, if you’re an actor, at least talk about
them. There was a lot of those connecting the dots throughout the
season.

But as disorienting, at times, as some of the show’s past few seasons have been, Coster-Waldau relishes being in the show’s final stretch. “This is the end of the show,” he said. “There won’t be any more stories after this, so, for me . . . I don’t know if it gets better, but I just find it a lot more interesting.”

But even in Season 7, the actor knew he had to aim toward perhaps the most pivotal decision of Jaime Lannister’s life: his choice to leave Cersei—his companion from the womb—behind, after she betrays the realm for, seemingly, her own power-hungry needs. “I knew that I was leaving at the very end,” Coster-Waldau said of the end goal he hitched his Season 7 performance to. “That was great, because then you know. . . . She’s actually almost ready to kill him, it seems for a second, and that breaks his heart, because his whole life has been about her.”

So, what does the show’s final season look like for Jaime, now that he’s without the relationship that has defined his entire existence? How does an actor access the essence of a character that has lost all of his identity? Coster-Waldau, for his part, considered a thought experiment: “Can we redefine ourselves? Most people have moments in their life where you go, ‘Can I really, fundamentally change?’ . . . The core of him has always been Cersei. . . . When that’s taken away, what are you then? What’s left? Is there anything left? When he leaves, obviously he has no idea. He doesn’t know the answer to that question.”

The answer Jaime may ultimately find in Season 8, though tragically relatable, could possibly crush those few Thrones fans still hoping Jaime might find redemption and a happy ending. (A happy ending, on Game of Thrones? They must not be paying attention.) The last goodbye between Jaime and Cersei has very little dialogue—Coster-Waldau conveyed everything with his crestfallen face—but one line was particularly burdened with layers of meaning. When Cersei implies she might have her brother/lover killed, Jaime responds: “I don’t believe you.” The subtext, for Coster-Waldau, was this: “I don't love you anymore. . . . I’m calling your bluff, and, you know, you can’t hurt me now because my heart has been destroyed by you. You can’t hurt me anymore than you already have.”

But during our chat, without spoiling anything, Coster-Waldau implied that Jaime’s resolve might not stick. “That’s, of course, said in a moment of passion. Who knows if it’s true?” he observed of Jaime’s defiant stand. “I’ve almost been married 20 years—June 6th will be our 20th anniversary—and I’m very, very lucky. I have a wonderful wife. But over 20 years, there are times where you have fights. You can be so angry that for a second in your passion and anger you can go, ‘Oh, fuck this.’ Of course, three seconds later, you go, ‘No, no, no. What am I doing? What am I thinking?’ . . . I think the fundamental emotions are the same in every relationship. As a setup for the season we’re shooting now, it was just amazing.”

Chagrined, Coster-Waldau paused for a moment to apologize to his wife for mentioning her in the same context as Cersei. “My wife is not going to be happy. She’s going to be like, ‘You’re fucking equating our relationship to that?’ No, I was just trying to make a point. Anyway. Sorry.”

So, what does Jaime Lannister look like without Cersei? From what Coster-Waldau says, we may not have long to find out. With only six episodes of the series left, the most tragic thing that could happen to Jaime is the possibility that he never gets a chance to find himself outside the influence of Cersei. Another redemption arc cut short. But even if his character is headed for devastation, Coster-Waldau promises it will be quite the ending for Jaime Lannister. “The boys have done an amazing job with ending Game of Thrones. It’s definitely been the toughest season—by far—that we’ve shot, ever. But it’s also been the most fulfilling.”